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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#281

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ggm wrote: post #22
bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

I want to believe some will move for lifestyle reasons, but the problem is the post war IPO landscape (post 1980s really) across biotech and ICT has made one stark barrier: USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. You have to be socially smart enough to see that a $100k salary and lifesty…

There's a lot of other benefits to the USA attracting high skill talent than just salary:

* English language school system so your kids (if you have them) will speak a world language.

* Racially and culturally diverse cultures, cuisines, and communities.

* Exposure to goods from most of the world, even if marked up.

* Availability of international franchises headquartered in other countries in major metros.

* A strong passport that offers visa-free travel to many locations and very favorable visa terms in many others.

and more.

My partner and I are (different) Asians and the higher-skilled members of our family who wanted to emigrate mostly rejected Europe because of non-English language instruction and honestly just feeling racially uncomfortable in most of Europe. I have some family in Germany (who like it there) so it's obviously not impossible, but European ethnostate thinking is just unattractive to a lot of non-Caucasian talent. Canada, UK, and Australia are not like this and have potentially a lot to gain if the US kneecaps its research bureaucracy.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#282

Post by kadushka »

jcgrillo wrote: post #194
aqueueaqueue wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon can live anywhere in the world. Very rich people are global citizens. They cannot be patriotic.

We allow them to live. Never forget how much we outnumber them by.

Who are "we"? Software engineers with comfortable lives? Minimum wage workers? Police force? Military?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#283

Post by kortilla »

amelius wrote: post #89
ggm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe some will move for lifestyle reasons, but the problem is the post war IPO landscape (post 1980s really) across biotech and ICT has made one stark barrier: USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. You have to be socially smart enough to see that a $100k salary and lifesty…

> USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating.

If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off.

You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#285

Post by tfigueroa »

Trasmatta wrote: post #147
throwawaymaths wrote: post #66

just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 the problems that led to these frauds are structural --no amount of patching the system will fix this. maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor, which is often painful, but especially painful for people (or code) with an entrenched incentive to continue existing. i dont mean to defend what the administration is doing but I…

> no amount of patching the system will fix this. > maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor People in tech need to stop with those analogies. A government is not a codebase. You can not apply the principles of "refactoring" and "patching" in the same way. It just doesn't work like that. But the problem is we have a bunch of people (some malicious, some clueless) trying to do exactly th…

Precisely. There’s no wisdom in the approach. “I’ll try refactoring - that’s a good trick!” is a poor approach.

You can try it, but the consequences of a poor refactoring? Look to the planned economies and five year plans.

The government is not a codebase; that mistakes its artifacts for its process. And the importance of process - in politics, in government - cannot be overstated.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#286

Post by pizlonator »

mastersummoner wrote: post #222
Dalewyn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people are largely unhappy with how things have been This is an understatement to say the least, and the fact it's been denied and even refused by the powers that be until today is why the pendulum has swung as hard as it has. Americans wanted change, and they finally got it with ferocious retribution because it's been held back for so long.

I'm confused. Are you saying specifically that you think the experiences described in this article are for the good of the country? Or do you think they're an exaggeration/lie.

I don’t think that’s what the comment said at all. You’re extrapolating too much.

Explaining the pendulum swinging violently because folks didn’t feel heard is not the same thing as saying that it’s a good thing that the pendulum has swung so violently.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#287

Post by araes »

anonylizard wrote: post #176
qwe----3 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck getting 500k+ grants in other countries. If you leave there won't be a shortage of postdocs looking for a new tenure track position.

This, the US is the country most willing to make daring bets on innovation. Europe will not spend even 0.1% of its pension/welfare fund on big research bets. The private investors their will only want real estate investments, not fancy wancy "VC". Young talent will flow one way from other countries to the US, because they've already seen what the grass is like on their side.

If the sentiment upthread holds, and large numbers of US academics move overseas, then relatively shortly, Europe may shift towards being more willing to make big research bets.

The population shift introduces new ideas, new perspectives, new ways of operating research, new connections towards funding and money, new views on what big bets even means.

The influx of foreign scientists and academics into America over the last century caused significant shifts in how America operated and viewed the idea of research and academia. Post-war Europeans (Von Braun's crowd being an obvious example) caused a large shift in the way America funded "big bet" projects. Saturn V perhaps. Same may happen in Europe.

Those academics can use HN from the opposite side of the Atlantic. VC money especially has the possibility of being territorially bound, yet its often far less constrained by the those types of lines in the dirt than many funding opportunities.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#288

Post by pizlonator »

csa wrote: post #111
robbiewxyz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, life for most of these "regular people" in Germany was still very much in the tolerable range until well into WWII. This was a very weird realization and one that left me pretty sad. Edit to clarify: I also mean no condescension toward "regular people".

> From what I gather, life for most of these "regular people" types in Germany was still very much in the tolerable range until well into WWII. Correct. I’ve heard some harrowing stories about the moment of realization straight from the mouths of some of these people. Edit: To be clear, I’m referring to my family and their friends who lived through it.

> I’ve heard some harrowing stories about the moment of realization straight from the mouths of some of these people.

I’d love to know more.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#289

Post by kristjansson »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #257
jaredklewis wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social security yes, but it seems to me that reducing the cost of Medicare and Medicaid should be very much possible. We need to provide healthcare but it should be possible to make that less expensive

Im gonna start a downvote party on myself haha but here we go - if you want cheaper healthcare, get rid of the medical licence!! Let the free market work. Of course it wont be better but rich people will pay theough the nose for the top level of care, middle class will get the best care the market can provide for what they can afford and lower class will get someone regurgitating chatGPT - but it _will_ be cheaper. I…

Look, the plausible version of this is spelled: "force the AMA to allow and the USG to fund more residency slots, so the supply of MDs can meaningfully grow, and the premium they demand be reduced. Also maybe let NPs and CRNAs and the like practice more independent".

But throwing medicine to the whims of the market is absurd. We're going to pick surgeons by reading reviews on Google?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#290

Post by latentcall »

electriclove wrote: post #138
cbare wrote: post #133

The US has the strongest university and research system in the world. Wrecking that will be one of the worst acts of self-harm ever.

It has been wrecked. This is an attempt at fixing it.

Ah yeah the it’s broke so let’s smash the pieces into smaller pieces strategy.
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